Anthony Eden Quotes

19 Sourced Quotes

There is now doubt in our minds that Nasser, whether he likes it or not, is now effectively in Russian hands, just as Mussolini was in Hitler's. It would be as ineffective to show weakness to Nasser now in order to placate him as it was to show weakness to Mussolini.

Anthony Eden
It is a common happening that those in power, as their tenure of office continues, find themselves less and less able to contemplate relinquishing it.

Anthony Eden
We have many times led Europe in the fight for freedom. It would be an ignoble end to our long history if we tamely accepted to perish by degrees.

Anthony Eden
Every succeeding scientific discovery makes greater nonsense of old-time conceptions of sovereignty.

Anthony Eden
My mother preferred the simpler relationship which existed between donor and recipient to the more complicated one between mother and child.

Anthony Eden
On the occupation of France:
It would be impertinent for a country that has not suffered occupation to pass judgment on one that did.

Anthony Eden
Although [in 1937] we might still hope to prevent the divisions of Europe into Fascist and anti-Fascist camps, our real affinities and interests, strategic as well as political, lay with France, a fact which some of my colleagues were most reluctant to realise.

Anthony Eden
All my life, I've been a man of peace, working for peace, striving for peace, negotiating for peace. I've been a League of Nations man and a United Nations man and I'm still the same man with the same convictions, the same devotion to peace. I couldn't be other even if I wished. But I'm utterly convinced that the action we have taken is right.

Anthony Eden
We are in an armed conflict; that is the phrase I have used. There has been no declaration of war.
On the Suez crisis

Anthony Eden
Everyone is always in favour of general economy and particular expenditure.

Anthony Eden
Mr. Greenwood, when moving the Amendment yesterday, told us that the war would shake many strongly held views. I fear that this war will do very much more than that. The war will bring about changes which may be fundamental and revolutionary in the economic and social life of this country. On that we are all agreed.

Anthony Eden
You may gain temporary appeasement by a policy of concession to violence, but you do not gain lasting peace that way.

Anthony Eden
Our quarrel is not with Egypt, still less with the Arab world. It is with Colonel Nasser. He has shown that he is not a man who can be trusted to keep an agreement. Now he has torn up all his country's promises to the Suez Canal Company and has even gone back on his own statements.

Anthony Eden
We cannot agree that an act of plunder which threatens the livelihood of many nations should be allowed to succeed.

Anthony Eden
If we had allowed things to drift, everything would have gone from bad to worse. Nasser would have become a kind of Moslem Mussolini, and our friends in Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and even Iran would gradually have been brought down. His efforts would have spread westwards, and Libya and North Africa would have been brought under his control.

Anthony Eden
Long experience has taught me that to be criticized is not always to be wrong.
During the Suez crisis

Anthony Eden
It has had the effect of making us the 49th state [of America].

Anthony Eden
If you drive a nation to adopt procedures which run counter to its instincts, you weaken and may destroy the motive force of its action... You will realise that I am speaking of the frequent suggestion that the United Kingdom should join a federation on the continent of Europe. This is something which we know, in our bones, we cannot do... For Britain's story and her interests lie far beyond the continent of Europe. Our thoughts move across the seas to the many communities in which our people play their part, in every corner of the world. These are our family ties. That is our life: without it we should be no more than some millions of people living in an island off the coast of Europe, in which nobody wants to take any particular interest.

Anthony Eden
I do not believe that we can make progress in European appeasement if we allow the impression to gain currency abroad that we yield to constant pressure. I am certain in my own mind that progress depends above all on the temper of the nation, and that temper must find expression in a firm spirit. This spirit I am confident is there. Not to give voice it is I believe fair neither to this country nor to the world.

Anthony Eden